Friday, 2 October 2015

X

Yesterday has been repeating itself since it was invented in 1582.

I have consulted Wikipedia, that handy repository of inconsistent facts and lists, regarding a small selection of historical events that have taken place on the 1st of October. It's an interesting day. Many disastrous things happened, like Disneyworld and Fascism and Ford. The first Soviet five-year plan was implemented, Nazis stormed Warsaw, Franco became head. A new British tabloid screamed as it entered atmosphere, Mao implemented a new China, and God was like, "Hey USA, I love you so much I'm going to put my name on your promissory notes." Finally, in 1880 Edison opened his first electric lamp factory because it was high time somebody started to make a profit from an invisible and infinite resource, i.e. electricity.

(I'm more of a Tesla girl myself, dreaming crazy wireless glitter clouds and lasers and all manner of ostensible impossibilities - probably because they are possible. Here's a Tesla thought:

The economic transmission of power without
wires is of all-surpassing importance to man. By its means he will
gain complete mastery of the air, the sea and the desert. It will
enable him to dispense with the necessity of mining, pumping,
transporting and burning fuel, and so do away with innumerable causes of
sinful waste. By its means, he will obtain at any place and in any
desired amount, the energy of remote waterfalls—to drive his machinery,
to construct his canals, tunnels and highways, to manufacture the
materials of his want, his clothing and food, to heat and light his
home—year in, year out, ever and ever, by day and by night. It will
make the living glorious sun his obedient, toiling slave. It will
bring peace and harmony on earth.

- "The Transmission of Electrical Energy without Wires as a Means for Furthering Peace" (1905)

Needless to say, peace is bad for business. Free stuff just doesn't make money, and unequal access to resources for living is essential to the practice of Capitalismus. Poor Nikola).

Anyway. Back to the first day of the Xth month, and the reason Edison's electric lamps caught my attention (aside from the fact that the list was chronological and I saw that factoid first). Something else transpired on the same day almost a century later, something that demanded the use of electricity, free or not: the very first brain scan using x-ray computed tomography (the mighty CT scan) was performed in London in 1971.CT voice: Hello heaving ball of storming electrical pulses that controls the central nervous system! I am the preliminary device used for discovering lesions that corrupt thy functions, often leading to the mighty MRI machine that confirms the true nature of the lesion(s).

Surely this event is just one more reason that October is observed as The Month of Awareness of Grey Matter Perversions. I've written many posts on this blog about the various brain months in different countries (but especially Canada's October, because it's a good month overall). Basically ever year I babble about them because 1) I get lazy engaging with updates in the tumour world, and 2) I don't otherwise have too much to say about my bubblegum dustbunny since my last surgery. Thankfully it's just hanging around, being lethargic, and that suits me just fine. I like to forget it's there.

My next MRI scan is coming up soon and I'm performing many spooky Halloween rituals to ensure that it shows a continued lack of change. I must report that when I am inside the machine my noggin becomes the power centre of that whirling plastic and metal universe shaped like a donut. Everybody pretends it doesn't happen, but really my head begins to spin like crazy and becomes like Tesla's Egg of Columbus (see a demo here. The soundtrack is exceptionally special). So, wish me luck.

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ABOUT ME

I'm Frances Kruk and I hated having a Grade II oligoastrocytoma since 2007, which the WHO has since re-classified as a Grade III anaplastic astrocytoma, as I found out in early 2016. Sounds worse, but apparently it's still the same old tumour. It comes back and comes back and comes back and comes back. It's the cancer that's not a cancer. It's aggressive but not aggressive. It's high grade but actually it's intermediate grade, though they used to call it low grade. What is it. WHAT IS IT. I hate it I hate it I hate it. But at least I've been getting some glam photos out of the situation.

WHAT THIS BLOG IS FOR

It started as an adjunct to a fundraising campaign for Brain Tumour UK in 2011. Other than that, it's become a platform for whining and documenting how I deal with subjective horrors, which is basically what blogs are for. While I post irregularly, I do hope that maybe some people will gain something from it, whatever that may be.